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Archive for February, 2016

How to “Change the Air” and Keep Things Fresh Posted by on Feb 29, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Health Tip

The reason the comic above was written as taking place “in Switzerland” was that I had heard of this curious practice of opening all the windows of the house to “change the air” from a friend, who at the time was studying abroad in a small town near Zurich. Apparently the mother of his host family would…

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How Language Learning Makes You Want to Try New Things Posted by on Feb 24, 2016 in Archived Posts

Language and culture are hard to separate. You can’t really take one without the other – you can’t fully understand a language without understanding some of the culture in which it thrives, and you certainly can’t understand a culture without fully understanding its language. But to me, that relationship between language and culture actually has…

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3 Languages With Surprising Origins Posted by on Feb 17, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Slavic Inflection

I like to imagine that languages branch off one another like leaves on a tree, growing and growing and then, when the time is right, sprouting new languages of their own. This is an attractive and popular visual metaphor, but we all know that languages don’t evolve along straight paths from singular roots. More accurate would…

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Celebrate Digital Learning Day! Posted by on Feb 15, 2016 in Archived Posts

Technology is revolutionizing the way we do, well, just about everything. From communicating to shopping to learning, “there’s an app for that.”  Tech has turned the academic world upside down, and we’re not just talking about flipped classrooms. Digital learning can differentiate learning, speed up instruction, and remove time and place restrictions: “Digital learning…

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Putting Your Languages to Work: How Languages Can Fund Your Travels Around the World Posted by on Feb 10, 2016 in Archived Posts

Proficiency in a foreign language is more than a line on your resume or an impressive party trick—it’s a ticket to self-funded world travel. Most people think that you need to be a translator or language teacher to make a living off your languages, but the opportunities hardly end there. While those are both great…

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6 Tips For Making Language Learning Fly By Posted by on Feb 8, 2016 in Archived Posts

Nothing worth doing is fast or easy. Language learners know this better than most people, I’d wager. You spend all day agonizing over nuances in grammar, trying to memorize obscure and hard-to-remember vocabulary, and attempting to get as much opportunity to speak as humanly possible so you can make those mistakes and get over them…

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Pushing Past the Language Learning Plateau Posted by on Feb 3, 2016 in Archived Posts

Itchy Feet: Mystery Solved

I gotta admit, lately I’ve been feeling a little out of the language-learning loop. With a new job, my marriage coasting well through its second year, and a cat that gets bothered when I move any furniture around, I feel like I’m settling into a routine. Sadly, that routine doesn’t really involve any new languages…

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